FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a card carrier part which, together with a card to be read, can be introduced into a contact carrier part of a card reader.
Card reader devices in which such card carrier parts can be used are for instance, among a very long list, reader devices in mobile phones, for accepting and/or passing on information furnished by or for a chip card or a SIM card.
Chip cards and SIM cards are used in mobile phones above all for subscriber identification. Layout and function of chip cards and SIM cards are well known and require no further explanation here.
Where card readers for mobile phones (but also in other devices) have a card carrier part which can be introduced together with a chip card or a SIM card into a contact carrier part of the card reader that contains the electrical contacts for contacting the chip card or SIM card, then that card carrier part is a in the form of a drawer or slide. That carrier part is insertible (with or without a chip card or SIM card placed on it and if at all possible held immovably) into a slot of the contact carrier part.
Card reader devices of this type are not limited to the use for the chip cards and SIM cards. Instead, they can be basically used to read any arbitrary other cards as well.
This applies among other things also for so-called MM cards, which are currently being developed and already in the near future will be used as memory storage media, or more precisely as mass memories in semiconductor technology in the most various kinds of electronic equipment. "M" is an acronym which stands for "multimedia" and is an expression of the manifold possible uses of MM cards. MM cards currently have a memory capacity of 64 Mbits. However, memory capacities into the gigabit range are already considered realistic.
Due to the small size of the MM cards--in most MM cards, the size is currently between that of SIM cards and that of chip cards--and also because of the fact that the reader devices for such cards can also be very small (no motors, movable reader heads or the like are required), the use of such MM cards can also be considered for mobile phones. In mobile phones, the MM cards can for instance be used to store telephone books, speech (answering machine function), fax messages, software, and the like.
However, in mobile phones and in many other devices in which MM cards are used, there is only very restricted space available for installing additional card readers. A further difficulty is that the cards to be read must be capable of being changed quickly and easily. Furthermore, the card reader should preferably be capable of holding a plurality of cards at the same time.
The size of card readers that contain card carrier parts as noted in the first paragraph above is determined to a considerable extent by the card carrier parts themselves.